End of the 4S/EASST brief report, learnings and experiences

Today has finished the International STS Congress, organized by the 4S and the EASST associations. It has been four intense days where we were able to learn a lot of things of several topics around Science and Technology Studies: from LGTB to Communication; from Security to Big Data; from Epidemics to Urbanism; and much more. 

In this post, from POBICS we want to offer some of our most interesting things we have learnt along these amazing days:

- The Mentorship Program was an incredible idea. It was an such interesting idea to meet young professors and PhD students in the Congress. In our case, our student Enrique Baleriola was matched with the professor Joao Rangel. Enrique could learn a lot of things about post-doc opportunities, scientific production, and of course our topic: pandemics and biosurveillance.

- The Congress organizatios was perfect. From meals to Keynote Plenaries; passing by registration or times for communications. We have to think that it was a big congress (about 2000 persons), so any particular delay was no importance.

-We think our track was very interesting. And we say that not for being managed by us, but for the communications carried out by the participants, particularlly the "non POBICS" members. They help to make from our track a wide-view session where we could learn a lot and also make new contacts in order to write papers, exchange ideas, etc.

- We loved Isabelle Stengers Plenary! Although we were expecting another kind of event (perhaps a more classical "masterly class"), we have to recognize that for a "by other means" congress the employed format was better. It consisted in a three-first-speakers that summarize the subplanaries of the previous day, giving us their point of view, launching some questions, and making us reflect about some "by other means" topics. Finally, Stengers made a speech giving her point of view about the previous speakers summaries and making us wring our minds about the contemporary status of Academia. 

Undoubtely, we are so happy to being participate in the 4S/EASST Congress. We hope we can sign in in the next years. Thanks to all people to their participation!

Photo Credit: Elentir